A dead ringer for Yoda, our cat Sammy serves as silent witness to Fred's wisdom, while I dive into the adventures on the comics pages. One recent Sunday, though, I surfaced in time to catch Fred at the end of an oral essay on the wonders of budding spring:

"Plum blossoms have such a short mission in life," he said.

Drawn to missions with the zeal of a Luke Skywalker, perpetual student of the Force, I joined Fred at the window. The Japanese plum tree had exploded into full bloom, seemingly overnight. Tiny white blossoms, already loosened by the wind, swirled like snowflakes and drifted earthward.

They seemed to fulfill their mission, however fleeting, without conflict. Come into being, do their thing, move on. Like all of us, I thought. Except for the no conflict part.

Struck by the enormity of our brevity, I saw us all as plum blossoms, essentially innocent, each a part of one tree, our lives short and swift as the fall from branch to grass. I imagined Fred and Sammy with their faces peeking through white petal frills, and swallowed back sudden tears. How, I wondered, can people not be kind to each other when we'll all be gone in the next instant?

While Obi-Wan and Yoda quickly resumed regular lives as banker and cat, I couldn't shake Luke. Finally, on Wednesday I declared a Plum Blossom Day. For twenty-four hours I'd see everybody as fellow plum blossoms, each contact (whether blessing or lesson) essential to our mutual mission in life.

Everyone got the white-petal frill treatment: the smiling fellow in the car in front of me at the drive-up mailbox who took my letters and posted them along with his, the moody waitress who didn't want me to switch to shrimp at lunch, the skateboarder who saluted as he sailed past. With each I felt at peace, one with the world, accepting of our individual contributions to the universal whole.

Until late that afternoon.

While waiting at a stop sign, I noticed a plum blossom on a bike to my right. When I looked left again, a yellow metal wall occupied the space, dangerously close to my tiny red compact.

The wall moved. My car's left front fender crunched as the dump truck rolled over it, turned right onto the thoroughfare, and shot down the street at warp speed. The woman on the bike gestured wildly to me, then pedaled after the truck. Stunned but mobile, I joined the chase.

Galaxies of traffic later (the bike lady far behind and the truck lost to view), I backtracked to a construction site where a guy with a stop/slow sign pointed out the most recent yellow arrival.

"That was you?" asked the truck driver, as I emerged from my crumpled car. "I thought I ran over a curb."

"You ran over me, and you kept going," I said, still too shocked to be angry.

"You shouldn't have been there," he protested. "I didn't see you." He explained something about big trucks and little cars.

"You ran over me, and you kept going," I repeated.

Dropping to one knee, he drew a diagram in the dust to illustrate how I must have wedged myself between his truck and the curb. He pointed accusingly at me with the hand that wasn't drawing pictures.

His dedication to proving his innocence, no matter logic or physical evidence, rendered me single-minded. "You ran over me," I said, "and you kept going."

Police reports, insurance company statements, auto body estimates, and forty-eight hours later, I remembered Plum Blossom Day.

By then, the ground at the base of the tree was white with fallen blossoms. I watched as the breeze shook loose a few last flowers. Silently they floated, until a gust of wind sent them bumping into each other, then away to fall separately again. No guilt, no blame, no insurance claim.

I tried to figure how the truck driver had missed seeing my car, until I realized my fantasy was just another diagram in the dust. I, too, wanted to prove the unprovable.

Instead, in my mind's eye I gave the truck driver the white frill treatment. And then I gave it to myself, for we're all in this together.

Luke Skywalker knows. Beneath the mask of every Darth Vader, just another plum blossom.